Vehicles use telematics units to send and receive both voice and data communications. Often, the communications are exchanged with a central facility, such as a call center operated by a telematics service provider. In one aspect of these communications, the central facility wirelessly transmits to the vehicle short message service (SMS) messages, which include data or instructions used by the vehicle. However, the SMS messages transmitted from the central facility are not guaranteed to arrive at the vehicle. Sometimes the data content of the SMS messages can be time-sensitive and it would be helpful to increase the chances of successfully communicating data to the vehicle.